CYBER KINGS DESTROYING DECENCY
As yet another appalling murder is streamed live, a leading writer warns we must f ight the lawless billionaires of the net – or say goodbye to democracy and honesty for ever
WHAT took them so long? When Facebook broadcast the horrific Thai murder of an 11-month-old baby, Natalie Jiranuch, hanged by her own father, it was a full 24 hours before the corporate giant removed the unspeakable video footage. By then it had been seen by 370,000 people, including the baby’s distraught mother, Jiranuch Trirat.
Just a few days earlier, in Cleveland, Ohio, pensioner Robert Godwin was out collecting aluminium cans when Steve Stephens, 37, approached and shot him dead, muttering: ‘I’m about to kill this man right here, the old dude.’
This killing was put on Facebook Live – a murder which then remained visible to a supposedly civilised world for a full two hours. And how did Facebook respond to these snuff videos and the torrent of justified criticism? By asking the rest of us, effectively, to do its job for it.
‘We are reviewing flows to make sure people can report videos and other materials that violate our standards as easily and quickly as possible,’ said a spokesman. ‘We know we need to do better.’
It does not take a tech expert to know that this was corporate bilge. The big beasts of new media believe they are untouchable and unaccountable. And this has to change.
THERE is little that could match the brutality of these two on-line killings, yet they belong in a cesspit of appalling material that is freely available online. At its terrible worst, it means terrorist slaughter, the torture of disabled people and young women, gang rapes, violent porn, child abuse, suicide and self-harm sites. Easily accessed, they are desensitising people, coarsening cultures, distorting values. Google lost millions last month when major companies pulled their advertising because their products were being promoted next to extremist YouTube videos. On that occasion, Google did act, and fast. Money counts, it seems. People do not.
But online abuse is not confined to a world of murderous outrages. Instead it has seeped into an everyday existence in which trolls, for example, are free to be as intimidating and malicious as they please.
Women and people of colour are viciously targeted. A friend of mine, a female Muslim local councillor, tried to kill herself after a particularly nasty week. In this virtual world there is no limit to the aggression hiding beneath a cloak of digital anonymity. Of course we cannot blame Twitter, Facebook or Google for everything. Degrading online material is a new, unprecedented problem that affects the internet as a whole.
But the leading figures of the industry bear a particular responsibility. The men who took us into the jungle do nothing to civilize it – even though it is they who make the billions of dollars.
Perhaps it is their very novelty which allows them to get away with it. Companies such as Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, project themselves as the slick makers of a brave new world where old rules like financial and social integrity are passé. I have been to both Google and Facebook premises in London. When you enter, it is like passing the toughest border control, but once inside, you can only be impressed. These are delightful, intellectual playgrounds with hammocks, roof gardens and fabulous restaurants.
It’s the strangest combination of secrecy and transparency, conformity and blue-sky thinking. And yes, these new corporations can be a force for good. The internet is an indispensable part of modern life. It has fast become as vital as fire, light, water and air. But those services, remember, are under some kind of state supervision.
NOT so the controllers of the new, essential utility. They are lawless, hubristic, allpowerful with businesses more profitable than any other sector in history. The most successful oil firms earn but hundreds of millions; Google, Facebook et al make billions. This is why the reprehensibly cold, nihilistic enterprises have put themselves above all laws, tax regimes and regulation. They are destroying government revenues and wilfully undermine democracies. Because they can.
In his excellent report, Tech Giants And Civic Power, Martin Moore of King’s College, London, expresses grave concern at the erosion of citizen rights as ungovernable internet companies take over the universe. Yes, the internet can be an effective political tool for citizens who wish to hold the authorities to account – in some circumstances. But remember this, too: around the world, the internet is as likely to be used by governments to misinform or spy. In many respects, the internet wields the power of a broadcasting system – but one without controls.
Truth itself and basic decency have been corrupted by the tech companies. Now the carriers of fake news want to ‘educate’ users so they can spot the lies and fabrications. It’s just another planned, cynical, change-nothing strategy.
Professor Gabriel Kahn, of the University of South California, warned last year: ‘Facebook and Google are essentially polluting an information ecosystem with trash, with garbage, and it is clear that garbage has an impact.’
This is everywhere. The internet is affecting impressionable people, children in particular. It is normalising sexual violence, encouraging discrimination and distorting elections.
The big operators now own and manipulate nations, communities and families. They do so without any sense of social, economic, political or democratic responsibility.
Zuckerberg, Google chief Eric Schmidt and others must be made to operate under the same tight rules and laws as newspapers and the traditional broadcast media. The internet giants have got away with too much for too long and have been contemptuous of fairness, accuracy, redress and consumer care – all the principles of good journalism.
Businesses which advertise on these sites must exert moral pressure too and, more importantly, governments and international agencies must act to tame the cabal that has become a far bigger danger to humanity than any global conflict or megalomaniac leader.
The controllers have put themselves above all laws